News

01 May 2014

Red Balloons for Syria

Finding connections and making meaning are at the centre of learning with the International Middle Years Curriculum. The Big Idea of every unit asks students to reflect on and make personal meaning of their learning. A fabulous example comes from the Form 2 (12-13 year olds) Geography class at La Escuela de Lancaster, Mexico; a vibrant learner-centred school which embraces the rich learning opportunities that using the IMYC brings.

The class was studying the IMYC Resilience unit with the Big Idea ‘Success over time requires persistence’. This provided the Geography class with a great opportunity to explore and express their feelings about the Syrian refugee situation through personal creative projects.

Three students came up with the idea of making a video of 99 red balloons, each with a message for the people of Syria on it, being released into the sky. Julia, one of the students explains, ‘all of this started when Anthony, our teacher, showed the class a video about the Syrian problems and shared the 99 red balloons tradition and what it can represent. We wanted to say that we have all we need and more and that even if we do a really small thing it can represent a lot for people in other parts of the world.’

The girls felt that is would be more meaningful if they included their classmates in their video; Jimena explained it would show them all working together ‘in union like the Syrian refugees’. They asked their teacher to help get the whole class involved.

‘What we wanted to do was to help people reflect about Syria’ Leoni said. The final F2 #withsyria video made by the three students, shows 99 children of La Escuela de Lancaster releasing red balloons of support into the sky to the music of the old protest song, 99 Red Balloons. Julia reflected by saying that she felt that they were successful and thought that making the video had meant something to all the students.